Monday, October 6

The West v ISIS: Air strikes just mean endless war minus victory.

So there's a US led war party in the desert and every Euro country with an F-16 to spare is piling in to the fray just so they don't miss their chance to get a swing in at the bad guys. Even Belgium rustled up a squadron. It's popcorn material for sure but it's also just an air offensive which means, for Western nations, you've just subjected yourself to never winning a war but continuing it indefinitely. Everyone with a TV or web connection already knows ISIS are the bad guys. Populations hate them. And the ISIS media wing loves this and drinks foreign civilian tears like it's freedom fuel. ISIS have been beheading people on video for a reason. They want attention. The interesting game at work here is the weight of military history working against the idea that air strikes ever won a war. Strategic bombing is nice WWII style but that only works when the enemy have factories to bomb. ISIS have none of that. They've got a loose social network, a hostage civilian population, some stolen Hum Vees and no production capacity of any kind. So where is the win here via JDAM?

ISIS picked this fight once they started beheading people on your TV screen and nobody nowhere ever picked a fight they believed they could not win. And that's remarkable for what it reveals about ISIS command ideology.

They really believe they can win this war.

ISIS have taken a leaf from the 9/11 playbook. A lot of empty places and Iraq got carpet bombed in the wake of the twin towers coming down. But, let's face it, the terrorists won that war a long time ago. If the goal of 9/11 was to damage, degrade and destroy the freedom of Western democracy then 19 religious nuts pulled it off. We're a police state now. In 1970s America you could get on a plane to Vegas just by rolling absently up to the check in counter and claiming you're the guy whose name was printed on the ticket. In 21st century America, your toddler's genitals get felt up by a government agent and the parents say yes sir, diddle my kid, this is acceptable because Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia and we need to be protected from the bad guys who fuel our cars. Let's face it, al-Qaeda won the war on terrorism a very long time ago.

ISIS, new kids on the block, believe they can top that because they're banking on the fact that we're that stupid.

One of the strengths of any guerrilla army throughout history is knowing when to stand your ground and when to run like fuck. ISIS will know how to run like fuck. They'll blend away once the rain of US and Euro JDAMs reach a crescendo. But their media wing won't. And that's why I've got serious reservations about 21st century warfare waged the way Western governments are waging it versus ISIS. If you're like me and have been hitting up LiveLeak all week to get some behind the scenes footage beneath the sanitized cool explosions Western news networks have been showing on TV, where the enemy dies clean and there is no unsightly limb separation or agonizing slow death under rubble, then I see an opening for the bad guys. This is where the ISIS media wing will gain some traction through social media. With a proper supply of dead baby footage, they stand a serious chance of enacting some counter narrative of their own.

Why?

Because air campaigns don't do shit v militias.

Never. Nowhere. Ever in time.

Air power is an awesome tool but nobody ever won a war from 20,000 feet.

Let's talk West Point 101. When you're at war, killing the enemy is always good. Killing the enemy while also killing civilians as collateral damage, while distasteful in the post war analysis (Hiroshima), is, by and large, acceptable (if you want to win). The interesting new paradigm at work here is what I hate to call the 'dead baby dynamic'. Since 21st century warfare has become a live popcorn munching event thanks to the Internet and 24hr TV news, parading casualties in front of news cameras has become a sort of counter propaganda and anti narrative that would've made Joseph Goebbels jizz his pants. For the defeated, if you can supply enough dead kid videos, there's a serious chance that you can convince a sizable segment of the enemy civilian population that war is bad.

Because humans are retarded by war.

But guess what... war is always bad

That's a given. And the truth is grim. Ask the average war protester what he'd do if an intruder broke into his house to steal all his shit and kill his wife and the likely answer is that he is going to freak. Your mild mannered protester will quickly resort to 'warfare' with that burglar and attempt to beat the living shit out of the intruder via the two by four which once boasted his protest sign that now suddenly comes in handy as a weapon while he swings away to break invader skull open. War, despite what Jesus might say, works as the enaction of a policy where you don't die but the guy breaking down your front door does. It's never pretty. Bear with me here, I know I'm stretching the metaphor but the ISIS threat they're advertising on TV is exactly this.... What do you do if there's a guy hanging out across the street openly telling the neighbors he wants to kill your wife? He could be full of shit or he could be serious. Do you call the police? What happens when you are the police? America's self appointed role and Obama's tech heavy foreign policy is to run the numbers through the NSA's mega computer and the resultant actuary tables say that that asshole across the street needs to die. The risk of an ISIS dirty bomb in Times Square and the global wreckage that would ensue outweighs the right for ISIS to exist; so logic dictates letting loose the greatest advantage any war fighter anywhere ever had.

The US Air Force.

My problem is, can you win that war from the air?

Am I advocating for a ground invasion?

Nope. I'm just interested in how wars, once put into effect, get won.

Air strikes without boots on the ground never work if you're interested in defeating the enemy. What's bothering me about this campaign is the stated objectives. The West says they want to "degrade" ISIS. Surely this is the shitiest and most obscure objective ever enacted as policy. In many ways, war is very simple. You win or you lose. If you want to defeat ISIS you win by occupying the territory they do and leave them no space to run like fuck to. The West is selling this war thinking superior technology from the air can beat 'the idea of ISIS'. The only way you can beat the "idea of ISIS" is to kill every militia fighter hiding in a hole, or, crazy though it might seem, come up with a better idea. Each option is equally impossible so what do you do? Despite the laser guided, infrared and night vision tech getting advertised on our nightly news as a problem solver via destruction, at the very least you need, in order to 'win', a recon team on the ground designating by eyeball who should and shouldn't get killed. That kind of HUMINT shields you from the media explosion of accidentally wiping out a wedding party though it looked, to the pilot, exactly like a terrorist campfire from 20.000 feet. And that's how we know there are already US boots on the ground in Syria and Iraq. Western populations demand clinical war now that Wikileaks and Snowden are all over the government's ass. The war we get sold on TV demands precision lest the population back home on their iPhones throw a shit fit if a baby gets killed. Just imagine if WWII had been fought that way? We'd fucking lose every time a Nazi baby died. Proxy wars are hard to fight in a world where information spillage is everywhere, bullshit is rampant and death is as cheap as it ever was, but it does mean that today, more than ever, attack policy can go against foreign policy if governments don't get a serious grip on the narrative. ISIS are media whores operating in an environment where the threat of a dirty bomb in Time Square is nearly as good as actually detonating a real one. Why? Because social media penetration is a very profound thing that changes the dynamic of warfare in the 21st century from all that's come before. Napoleon would've cried tears of joy and held Moscow if he'd had a media wing broadcasting to the Russian population just exactly why they should speak French. The Internet is changing how wars get fought..

Let's get even more technical. Drones.

When you're top dog on the global human hegemony heap like the US military is, conducting warfare while not subjecting your personnel to death is desirable. Obvious right? A functional given since Sun Tzu. Right now, the skies over Raqqa and other places in Syria and Iraq are filled with hardcore Western remote control technology. If you approach a HumVee in Syria or northern Iraq, a guy half way around the world at his work station nods to his supervisor and minutes later, the vehicle and its environs get carpet bombed by a guy who pulled the trigger from the opposite side of the world. The military call it suppression.The politicians call it 'degradation' and I call it war via call center and none of it means you win. It just provides a prescription for endless war. ISIS have done their homework and learned how to challenge civilization. Let's face it, we're living in Blade Runner. Victory will remain elusive for Western governments so long as your population demands safety. And who doesn't demand safety? ISIS doctrine is exploiting this and forcing Western governments to act in a bombing campaign that makes no sense. The world in 2014 is a boiling cauldron of seething rivalry between the great powers but, unlike 1914, nobody can make a big geopolitical move because nukes provide a cap on ambition where nobody can win, so proxy warfare, economic warfare and war via computer espionage have become king. None of the above will work against ISIS.

Let's state what we know for a fact.

Energy wars are complicated.

Any military action by any state actor in the Middle East is by default an energy war.

ISIS are formidable because the 'idea' behind ISIS recruits angry Sunni youth from many far flung places and that strikes fear into the heart of power elites in Sunni dictatorships like Saudi Arabia, Qatar and every other Arab state that chucked an F-16 into the recent attack. The Shia in southern Iraq are not afraid of ISIS because they can rely on Iran for support. Mosul has become expendable.

Meanwhile, the Kurds, wielding their own excellent militia and capitalizing on US air strikes, will hold Kirkuk, the oil producing gem that cannot be allowed to fall. Interestingly, the Turks, NATO members next door, have chosen to sit the whole thing out because it's getting dangerous for them a) because fellow Muslim foreign fighters are spilling over their borders into the war zone b) because the political situation in Turkey is tenuous and Erdogan got elected by religious conservatives whose goals align with a fundamental idea of Islamic unity and c) because any help Turkey provides v ISIS makes an independent Kurdistan more likely. Remember, ISIS had 49 Turks held hostage a few weeks ago but guess what... they released all of them. Not a single beheading of any kind. Talk about knowing where your bread is buttered. ISIS atrocity is firmly directed against the West.

It's a clusterfuck of the first order and a very complicated war fighting environment.

Meanwhile, ISIS are loving it.

The only real question for Western policy is, where does victory against ISIS lie?

The only way to win is via occupation and who has got two million troops to spare to subjugate Sunni Arabia? The cost benefit analysis is exactly what ISIS are exploiting. That's why we get the current air campaign that amounts to a capitulation, Kony 2012 style, to popular opinion because beheading people on TV is making people rage and the public want action.

Every smart person alive today knows we're living in a kind of dystopia, a best of times, worst of times consumerist cornucopia that would make Orwell shit bricks. That's why I believe it's reasonable to stand back and resort to, and end on, a philosophical question regarding our species.

Warlike upright apes though we may be, we're still apes who managed a moon landing and currently have robots scouring Mars via remote control So the question must be why are we wasting our time with this shit? Should we not be directing our attention to a moon base, a human Mars landing and colonizing the galaxy?

I understand the current tactical fight for resources here on Earth, but how many ISIS fighters, and fighters on every side, are smart enough to realize the fundamental question that has been bothering humanity since Thucydides wrote his terrible account of self destruction in the 5th century BC. That question posed 25 hundred years ago remains terribly relevant in 2014.

Awesome analysis. My opinion to your philosophical question as an "outsider" to the west who is immersed in the "west" is the following. Racism.

The "West" does not want to face what it did in colonial times and in the genocide against the natives of North America. The "West" would have to accept that it and not any other is the barbarous "race" on our planet. This is too hard a pill to swallow, which it could not pass through its throat in the early 1990s. So, it relented and began a campaign of race baiting amongst its population through its media.

That's what we see today. White middle class parents who were born in the 1960s do not want their children to have to compete with the "lower" immigrants some of whom are somehow beating them to better achievements. So they would rather accept name based discrimination on resumes than have their kids settling for a minimum wage job. They accept a distinction of "civilized" and "uncivilized" opinions to create a distinction in the education system which would give their kids an advantage.

Hence, the "West" has become occupied with keeping the status quo of their economical superiority. This then has led to the dystopia which we live in. I will give you a personal example. I was raised in liberal, secular, non-religious family, educated family. I immigrated to Canada from Afghanistan. I have not been looked at as anything but an outsider "Muslim" since I have been here. I live in Toronto, which should be the most comfortable place due its diversity. However, all the diversity is grouped into small homogeneous groups. Where there is diversity it is stratified with the "westerners" taking positions of authority, especially in Academia.

Let me see...you're from Afghanistan where the two dominate tribes there massacre each other frequently yet you're complaining about racism in Canada. HA! What do you want a cookie? White man not kissing your ass? If your Pashtun you think the Tajiks going to kiss your ass? Has anyone in Canada tried to behead you and your family for not being Christian or an Infidel? Shut the Fuck up and count your blessing or move back to Afghanistan where you can "live without" racism.

Great read WT, one of your best, and some very interesting analysis.That's 2 posts with about a month between them, will the trend continue? there are many conflicts going around, if there's a way we could support you to continue writing more often, please share it with us.

"Warlike upright apes though we may be, we're still apes who managed a moon landing and currently have robots scouring Mars via remote control So the question must be why are we wasting our time with this shit? Should we not be directing our attention to a moon base, a human Mars landing and colonizing the galaxy?"

This really boils situation down for me to understand with my primitive cave man brain..this talk of isis. More clear. In CAUSING 911 the US/Isreal and Britain have created a monster that will not go easily back in to the box. Now I ask you (all readers here) with my comprehensive /realistic and cynical understanding of the bullshit factory the US has created, where does a good person put his/her loyalties these days? Where do i rest my faith on, being born and raised in USA to believe in flag and country etc? Now the wool is off my eyes and I see all the BS fucking wars for what they really are$$$$$$$$. Anyone? Anyone?

US foreign and military policy in the Middle East fails because there is a disconnect between what we as a country say we believe and what we actually want. We say we want to spread Western style freedom and representative democracy. As you said though, after 911 we got scared and pawned freedom for a police state. The level of democracy is only as good as our elected representatives and given the single digit approval ratings of Congress I don't think anyone can say with a straight face that the world wants to buy what we're selling. However, what we actually want is pretty simple - oil. There are lots of ass backwards shitholes in the world and the only ones we care about enough to get in a fight over have oil.

If we were honest with ourselves solving this one would be pretty easy. If we were really about freedom and democracy we could just disengage from the whole area, let people sort out the political problems by themselves and buy oil and the price established by the free market. Or the US govt could go a darker but still more honest route and meet with the current leaders of all Oilstans of consequence. Tell them, "Look, we need oil. We don't care that much about how you run your country as long as the spigot flows black. Give us a good deal on it and we'll give you a good deal on our fancy weapons. The second the oil stops we start selling those weapons to your opponents instead, cheap." Given that the two major sects of Islam hate each other only slightly less than they hate us, if we pulled out and followed the above strategy, chances are they would go to work killing each other since they would be deprived of their common enemy.

Either choice seems preferable to remaining policeman of the world while trying to cope with a national split personality disorder in which both personalities lie pathologically.

Not sure if my comment through got so I'll repeat, some of this analysis makes sense only if you remove questions of the interpretations of historical facts and moral justfications for killing enmasse. Also, you need to ignore your fan base.

The economics and (some of) the geopolitics are straight out of 1984 - it's all about boom time for arms dealers. ISIS are getting their hardware from looted Iraqi Army bases and Norinco reps. Who do you think's buying their oil?

There's this brilliant piece of footage of a British missile blowing up an ISIS "technical" - the missile and the sortie that delivered it cost at least half a million, while the technical cost, what - 20K? Now that's the sort of attrition that industries like.

The point isn't to win - it's to fight. Keep the factories rolling flat out. Keep the oil coming in. The West has bombers and Kurds, Russia has its conscript army / Syria (hey, when are you gonna do Ukraine?) and China has ISIS, who do not play a political or ideological role at all - they are simply consumers of weapons and dispensers of cheap oil, basically robots made out of meat, which is pretty much all a religious fanatic is anyway.

Hard to see how you could end it if you wanted to, anyway - if allowed to run free they probably will toss some nasty shit our way. Screw 'em, I say.

WT you omit too many material facts. You gotta break down the West funding/creating ISIS.

You really think we couldn't have bombed them into oblivion when they are on the march into Mosul with thousands of Toyotas? We got satellites.

Get real. ISIS is us. The social media/structure/being able to sell their oil etc.

Sunni Jihadists backed by Qatar/saudi arabia/usa/uk/israel/uae/turkey. The West doesn't want the Iranian-Iraq Pipeline to go through to Syria's port w/ Russia.. It competes with Qatar(Exxon). This is a global proxy war against Russia/China/Iran/Syria.

The reason ISIS exists is to fight Assad for the pipeline. The gas false flag last year didn't work. This is the new way in. A few youtube videos and everyone is down for what they weren't a year ago.

The SAA has been winning this war. Now we want a no-fly zone so we can limit their air capabilities. "moderate opposition" doesn't exist. Moderate Syrians back Assad. Jihadis (FSA/IS/AL nusura) are all crazies paid for by the west to screw up Iran/Russia's gas deal.

We are in a global financial war against Russia/China. Oil and natural gas are the battlefields. This is the war for the dollar as reserve status.

Israeli's believe the land that was promised to them extends from the Nile to the Euphrates, and they'll take it inch by inch if they have to. Afterall, god helps those who help themselves.

The Sinai is a strategic asset which would bring Israel a lot of power, and, low and behold, terrorism in the Sinai... They're taking advantage of instability in neighbouring countries to slowly expand their borders, and you could observe the truth of the situation when "Syrian rebels" attacked Syrian air defence installations immediately preceding air strikes by Israeli air force...

If all the land Israel claims, only the Saudi territory represents the biggest threat, but Israel are playing a very long, drawn out game here, it will be generations before Israel is ready, their population will be much larger, and Saudi Arabia's political power will dry up with its oil reserves...

Israel play a much larger role than everyone thinks. This is like the Islamic terrorists from a few decades ago who were photographed with star of David tattoos.

Wartard, you've been slowly turning from cynical comic to a meditative tragedian. You're becoming a ruminating goat---beware of goatfuckers. Maybe you're just getting older---maybe you've got a child or see one on the horizon---or is it something more ominous?

Older than Thucydides is Heraclitus. Heraclitus foresaw this fundamental question and dissolves it before it's even asked: Heraclitus says, Πόλεμος πάντων μὲν πατήρ ἐστι, i.e. "War is the father of all things."

War isn't simply just about fighting for resources. Look at our mindless wars online that serve no purpose other than that of warring. Human beings aren't warmongers: we don't wage war, war wages through us. It's waiting for us in the farthest reaches of the galaxy should we continue to colonize. It's behind the impulse to colonize and master control. War is a fundamental condition for there to be anything at all. This is meant in the ontological sense, whereas war has many faces in the ontic sense (from atom bombs to card games). War wars against all other understandings of being, gathering up everything into itself. This is the will to power.

The Judge in Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian echoes Heraclitus when he gives his sermon that "War is god."

Blood Meridian: "The good book says that he that lives by the sword shall perish by the sword, said the black.

The judge smiled, his face shining with grease. What right man would have it any other way? he said.

The good book does indeed count war an evil, said Irving. Yet there's many a bloody tale of war inside it.

It makes no difference what men think of war, said the judge. War endures. As well ask men what they think of stone. War was always here. Before man was, war waited for him. The ultimate trade awaiting its ultimate practitioner. That is the way it was and will be. That way and not some other way.

...All other trades are contained in that of war.

Is that why war endures?

No. It endures because young men love it and old men love it in them. Those that fought, those that did not.

That's your notion.

The judge smiled. Men are born for games. Nothing else. Every child knows that play is nobler than work. He knows too that the worth or merit of a game is not inherent in the game itself but rather in the value of that which is put at hazard. Games of chance require a wager to have meaning at all. Games of sport involve the skill and strength of the opponents and the humiliation of defeat and the pride of victory are in themselves sufficient stake because they inhere in the worth of the principals and define them. But the trial of chance or trial of worth all games aspire to the condition of war for here that which is wagered swallows up the game, player, all.

Suppose two men at cards with nothing to wager save their lives. Who has not heard such a tale? A turn of the card. The whole universe for such a player has labored clanking to this moment which will tell if he is to die at that man's hand or that man at his. What more certain validation of a man's worth could there be? This enhancement of the game to its ultimate state admits no argument concerning the notion of fate. The selection of one man over another is a preference absolute and irrevocable and it is a dull man indeed who could reckon so profound a decision without agency or significance either one. In such games as have for their stake the annihilation of the defeated the decisions are quite clear. This man holding this particular arrangement of cards in his hand is thereby removed from existence. This is the nature of war, whose stake is at once the game and the authority and the justification. Seen so, war is the truest form of divination. It is the testing of one’s will and the will of another within that larger will which because it binds them is therefore forced to select. War is the ultimate game because war is at last a forcing of the unity of existence. War is god."

I may be a "ruminating old goat" as you say, but I can still acknowledge excellence. I just wish I was young enough to refute you ;) Your point is philosophical and though worthy does not help those under immanent danger. It's almost like that old "no atheists in a foxhole" paradigm.

I agree with you and I don't. And this is by no means a fancy tautology.

I mean it.

Now, and after the liberation of Allepo by Syrian ground troops under Russian air support, this is my justification of a two year old argument. Today, years after we both wrote our treatise, air power was a tool but infantry was the hammer.

Syria is a tragedy (obviously) and the casual nexus of our time (Thucydides would agree).

ok i watch the news and read a little bit, lets put foot up the couch and write.blabalbla... wars cannot be won by air... oh but hiroshima..blablabla.... 'enough dead kid videos'... blablabla...blogblogblog....lets pull this fact from here and this fact from here, stir it hard, some history name dropping there... ah yes, war/history factsoup.

oh and kids! also lets flee from the current situation and all live peacefully on mars, because if we send people there they will act differently than on earth!

the end (now please suck my dick and worship me)

"oh i love your post so much, gobble gobble gobble"

really?

so much writing and probably never been in real war or militairy.

stop. please just stop. if i want opinion i can make my own. do you have any experience other than put feet up and writing blogpost and watching news or what?

I'll try an answer for Wartard's question in the context of bombardment of ISIS: in this way the rockets, bombs and whatnot are consumed, hence more are needed, therefore everybody who is involved directly and indirectly in their production will be a little bit richer. Just think of how many parts are needed to maintain a single plane...Just think at the fuel consumption.But I'm quite sure that everybody on this blog knows this.

And I will not be surprised if new types of bombs will be tested against ISIS. This would be the second reason for keeping up with a mindless air campaign. Then there are many other reasons, related to the political context.

Anyway, the ISIS subject is much richer. For example, what were they negotiating last year in Jordan? And the representatives of ISIS included former officers of Saddam.

An earlier commentator refers to the saying of Heraclitus, that the war (polemos) is the father of things. Majority of people prefer to translate polemus as war, but there some who translate it as confrontation. So, if we read Heraclites as: confrontation is the father of all things, then I think it makes more sense. Because progress, change, always comes from confrontation, or competition.I think that the key in that saying is "all things". War cannot be father of everything, because it is characteristic to humans. However, confrontation, puts things in movement. Just think at the movements of planets.

Nothing since the end of Dec, his motivation to write something must be at an all time low.I do find that unusual, because there's just so much going on, he has a huge list of things he could right about, though I believe the new cold war poses the biggest threat.

War Tard, WHAT THE FUCK! This shit is getting more cynical than the Kremlin`s daily routine.

In case you`re not dead or dying, we stand between respect and selfiesness. Please know that WE are intoxicated with a lot of bullshit, from the media, Facebook, friends, family, casual beer discussions, and we press the fuckin` X button every single day. EXCEPT YOU.

We open you website at least twice a day for what? To see that fuckin` The West v ISIS: Air strikes just mean endless war minus victory AIRPLANE? No shit.

Allright, we saw that coming. You spend a lot of hours and that stupid popcorn (we all know it`s just whiskey) to make us happy and enlightened. Perhaps you have problems, a fucked up life. OK. But we deserve to know a fuckin` number: 26 of April 2033, next post. Ok, no problem, I just hope we don`t have to read it in Cyrillic or Mandarin.

And what about that strange NATO-EU-Ukraine-Russia-China game? And the United States` most trusted ally, Romania? And Moldavia? And that weird unrecognized land, Trans-Dniester, a puppy ”state” quietly feeding, well, the Russian 14th Army, just kilometers from the EU official border? Just like Nagorno-Karabakh? South Ossetia? We have a lot to talk, man, just give as a sign.

Ffffnnnnn uuurrrrr Wheres me bleedin article ya fuckin mangey cunt ya. WWHhere!!!! I check this blog everytime some fuckin foreign shithole has another conniption to know what Da Inside Scoop is so I can impress the lads at the party and hopefully get a shift off yer one but that game of thrones cunt produces monster turds more frequently than this piece of shit so I end up havin to pull meself off to the economist. Fuck this, im gonna start my own war blog all about war like with none of dis opinionated bias shit or waitin to gather perskective or "imformation" and havin somethin worth writin come on ya fuckin cunt!!!!!

Your precious War Tard is being held at an Official U.S. Government Blacksite(TM) franchise - he was getting too close to the True Nature of War and its necessity for the formation of a single homogenous decision making body for the benefit of all mankind.

HybridHybridWarfare : pay populist parties in Europe to create confusion and anti EU sentiment. Flood EU with weapons on the streets empowering the criminal elements, help Assad under pretense of attacking IS and push even more refugees to EU at the same time. Let the fear be used by before mentioned populist parties and (political)chaos begin. Voila; weakend EU, imploded NATO. Novorussia can feel strong and the FSB government is saved.... something like that? Am I starting to imagine things? Help me out WT!

Now the US is threatening to sail ships around the Chinese sand castles in the Spratleys. So much crap going on, I could see how it'd be hard for WarTard to both keep writing such great pieces on each of these and do something like, say, hold down a job.

Big question is what does Russia do next? Provide weapons to Kurds to attack inside Turkey? Impose a no-fly zone for NATO planes inside Syria? A little Georgia or Ukraine action into Turkey? War Tard's last Twitter post from August summed it up like this: "Shit's Complicated"

With no War Tard, maybe we can use this comment thread to post pieces about what's happening in the world now. Here's some prognostication from the New Yorker. Yeah, nothing as entertaining as War Tard's writing, but some perspective. Says it's going to take a long time to solve Syria.

War is profitable, the West and major powers and the biggest arm's manufacturer and suppliers, name a world power that does not sell arms? Why would they want a quick war? tensions around the world creates markets for which to sell more weapons, middle east and southeast asia are increasing military spending and guess who this 3rd world countries are talking too in beefing up there capabilities?

and maintaining regional conflicts maintains and protects the west status as a super power.

The west likes its role as the Police of the world, and also the supplier of arms if ever you need it.